Who else thinks that if the Hebrews had figured that out long ago, then Hebrew and Muslim diet restrictions might today be more permissive?
As noted in the article, the discussion is about human to human spread of this parasite. The solution there is even simpler, though more difficult: wash your hands regularly and thoroughly.
Cysticercosis was endemic in ancient Egypt. Pork was a staple food for common people in Egypt, but priests had strict dietary laws and they knew that Cysticercosis caused by tapeworms from swine.
Ancient Israelites just adopted a lot of customs from Egyptian Priestly caste, like circumcision, calendar and dietary laws. Not surprising, considering Moses was raised as Egyptian.
> Ancient Israelites just adopted a lot of customs from Egyptian Priestly caste...Not surprising, considering Moses was raised as Egyptian.
Even allowing the existence of Moses (which, if we're feeling skeptical we can reinterpret as the long cultural shadow of Egypt), this still seems like a "just so" story.
Do you know if there's any evidence that Egyptian priests actually had medical justifications for their taboos? Similarly, how do we know that ancient Israelites adopted certain beliefs due to direct Egyptian influence, rather than participating in widespread regional practices also found in the Canaanite populations from which they emerged?
During the Predynastic Period pigs were considered unclean in Upper Egypt but were domesticated and eaten in Lower Egypt. During the Dynastic Period Pigs were thought to be unclean in some areas and among the wealthier classes. Herodotus states that people who raised and ate pig were shunned but archaeological evidence suggests that although technically unclean, pork was still popular with many poorer Egyptians.
http://www.ancientegyptonline.co.uk/dietmeat.html
Moses or not, the word "Israel" was found in Egyptian scripts. "Hapiru" king "Yakubu" also mentioned in Egyptian sources - cognates with Hebrew Yaakov.
There are enough evidence, that ancient Egyptians and ancient Israelis had a contact.
I agree that the ancient documents about marauding apiru might be referring to Hebrews, but we really should keep our Bayesian hats on when evaluating archaeological evidence.
As for "Yakubu" and "Israel", any citations? Are those in one of the Amarna letters?
Vegetables should be properly cleaned before eating
If you eat contaminated pork, you won't get NCC (or other cysticercosis) , you get a worm.
You get Cysticercosis when you eat food contaminated with human faeces (sorry about that). Because then the human is "playing the part" of the pig.
Cooking and basic hygiene goes a long way.
You are wrong
"Humans are T. solium reservoirs. They are infected by eating undercooked pork that contains viable cysticerci."
They are infected -> they get a worm by eating undercooked pork. Not cysticercosis
Normal lifecycle: Pork eats tape worm eggs -> the pork gets cysticercosis -> Humans eat pork meat -> humans get tape worm -> worm releases eggs in human faeces -> back to step one
Cysticercosis happens when the human plays the role of the pork
Contaminated pork meat has no tapeworm eggs, it has cysticerci, which is the tapeworm larvae. Not eggs
You're confusing things.
Not simple at all. A trip outside the first world will tell you that raising pigs is not as easy as you make it. Not every family has land and resources avail to raise pigs as you said it.
See: http://cnia.inta.gov.ar/helminto/A%20Cisticercosis/Improving...
Any health issues are seen as a cost of doing business, after all they are a million ways to get sick and die in the third world.
Not necessarily that easy. For example, they didn't think farmyard manure was unclean but nonetheless used it to grow vegetables. My intuition is that it's easier to remember pig as "filthy", "unclean", "kosher", "forbidden" than their place in a complex and ever moving ecological system. Written record left by scholars could be deductions made about the current state of things and its lost meanings (that's actually part of my intuition).
Plus, the one doesn't exclude the other. The taboo could be because of the reasons the parent mentioned, and the "unclean due to eating feces" could just be a post-fact rationalisation of it.
Pigs were considered unclean more for their consumption of human flesh than for their consumption of human feces. Geological conditions in the Levant meant that bodies were typically interred in crypts or caves rather that being buried 'six feet under' where the decomposition couldn't be smelled by scavengers.
Historically, pigs are a recycling engine as well. You set them loose on garbage pile and they eat all sorts of stuff, producing rich fertilizer in return.
This stuff all originates from the ancient Egyptian practices, and the reasoning for the taboos aren't precisely known. I always thought they had more to do with the people who kept the pigs -- who were (and still are today in Egypt) non-Muslim/Jews who are associated with garbage.